A weird thing has been happening to my S5 since I got it, both before and after rooting. For some reason, not all widgets want to stick to my homescreen in the stock Samsung launcher. When I first got the phone, they all worked, as far as I could tell (I didn't investigate fully at the time, since I had no reason to suspect that they wouldn't work). After a little while, though, I found that I couldn't make Beautiful Widgets widgets stick. I long-pressed the homescreen, chose BW, selected a widget style/size, and customized it in the BW menu, just like it's supposed to work. But no widget appeared on the homescreen. What was weirder was that in the BW app itself, it listed my widget as working, even though it obviously wasn't. Uninstalling/reinstalling the app did nothing but clear the "existing" widget I had created from the list within the app interface.
At first, I thought this problem was limited to BW, so I just got rid of it and decided to jump to another app, but then I found that HD widgets didn't work, and another similar clock/weather-style widget group wouldn't work. Thinking maybe I had created some sort of data corruption, I did a factory reset, which worked for a while, but eventually the widgets stopped working again. After rooting, and finding that the problem still existed, I factory reset again, and started putting my apps back on one at a time, testing to see if it was a conflicting app causing the problem. No luck. The widgets worked until some random time when they simply no longer would.
I finally resolved to go without this kind of widget, since it wasn't a necessity, just a convenience. The problem is that I've now noticed that other kinds of widgets aren't working, either, including some that I'd really like to have work, like the Tasker timer widget.
Has anyone else noticed this problem occurring on their Verizon S5s? I'm going to look into which widgets actually still work (because some do), and which don't, and compile a spreadsheet, see if I can come up with a reason. I doubt I'll be successful, but it might be useful for other people who actually know how to fix things.
PS. Another weird thing is that the widgets stick to Nova Launcher homescreens just fine. Now, that would be okay, except that I want to do some theming now that we can flash some ROMs, and I thought that theming only applies to the stock launcher. Plus, I'm guessing that this isn't normal behavior and I do want to find out why it's happening, not just use a workaround.
After some more digging, I've found that, with only a few exceptions, the widgets that require some sort of customization before placement on the homescreen are the ones that don't work. All widgets that are simply "click-and-drop" work fine. But, if I click a widget and it opens up a configuration page, 9 times out 10 no widget will appear on the homescreen after the configuration.
It doesn't seem to matter what size the widget is, whether the widget's app is stock or third-party, or if it is solo on the widget page or part of a group of widgets from the same app.
Plus, there are some exceptions to this, such as Google Play widgets, Mint, and Email Me Pro. Others work sometimes, depending on what configuration you apply to the widget. For example, the stock Picture Frame widget works when you shuffle the pictures, and doesn't when you choose where to draw pictures from.
Very strange. I'm thinking my only course of action might be to go nuclear and flash a completely different stock image onto my phone through Odin. I downloaded one from this post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=53437805&postcount=1289. If I'm correct, this tar image should be exactly the same as the one that was on my phone from the factory, presumably minus whatever problem mine currently has. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
Okay, so flashed the tar image through Odin, reloaded some stuff without rooting (yet), and everything seems to be going fine so far. I'm pretty sure that by this point in my previous experiment, the widgets had stopped working. I think it must have been some sort of corrupted file deep inside my system that isn't there now.
Related
Since there appears to be such conflicting reports about lag or lack there of; I think it would benefit us all if we start to list who is having lag and who isn't whilst including where you bought the phone etc....
so to those that are having lag, give us these details:
1.) where and when did you get the phone, including the color
2.) branded or unbranded
3.) look under the battery or where ever for serial numbers or manufacturing dates
4.) report what firmware (if possible) and what the "about android" says in the OS
5.) what you are perceiving to be slow and when it occurs
If you would like some other examples of "slowness" check out the comments here: http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2009/08/htc-hero-review-part-two/
Note that after some discussion, all parties involved are equally confused and can't understand the opposing experiences of the other. I would also like to see reports from those that haven't experienced any lag or nothing like what some of the laggers are experiencing. I think we are experiencing some manufacturing differences here that have yet to be documented or made certain. I suspect this is all due to sense UI but who knows for certain. Is it possible to have the G1 Hero rom installed on a stock hero? Perhaps the Hero rom that is mentioned the in the hero dev forum would help? In any event, we should really start compiling specifics in a single thread as nobody likes buyers remorse
Not geographical. Its about the way you use your phone.
Sawkes said:
Not geographical. Its about the way you use your phone.
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Click to collapse
Fine. But it shouldn't be. If the phone is "just suppose to work" then there apparently still needs to be some optimization to account for the apparent excesses of others. I'm SURE it's JUST about what these people are doing...come on man, there has to be something else going on even if it is simply due to sense UI needing some optimization tweaks. You can't just toss away the experiences of many different folks (reviewers included) with the implication that the phone is not at all at fault for the negative reports.
I agree, I think there are variables we aren't considering. I think it comes down to the use of widgets and the amount of screens you have running, though I'm not totally sure.
I personally have not experienced any lag. I have a white sim free Hero, I use 3 screens, one with wifi, bluetooth, mobile data and gps widgets, a weather widget and a few icons. Another page has all icons, and the third has the bookmarks widget. I used to have the contacts widget on the second page and noticed no lag when using that either.
Once I tried to start up as many apps as I could to see if I experienced the lagginess people were talking about.... with no result. Still very slick.
What I don't have is a clock widget. I personally think it's useless when you have the time in the taskbar. I don't use a twitter widget either, but Peep seems to start itself sometimes.
That leads me to something else, I have apps which start themselves up spontaneously. Peep, Glympse, calendar for example.... they all show up in the task list (Taskiller) when I haven't used them. I've switched off any auto updates/ stay logged out etc. So that's a bit weird. That's part of the reason I'll use Taskiller maybe 4 or 5 times a day to kill everything running.
All in all I'm very happy and impressed with the useability of this device.
Switchbitch said:
I agree, I think there are variables we aren't considering. I think it comes down to the use of widgets and the amount of screens you have running, though I'm not totally sure.
I personally have not experienced any lag. I have a white sim free Hero, I use 3 screens, one with wifi, bluetooth, mobile data and gps widgets, a weather widget and a few icons. Another page has all icons, and the third has the bookmarks widget. I used to have the contacts widget on the second page and noticed no lag when using that either.
Once I tried to start up as many apps as I could to see if I experienced the lagginess people were talking about.... with no result. Still very slick.
What I don't have is a clock widget. I personally think it's useless when you have the time in the taskbar. I don't use a twitter widget either, but Peep seems to start itself sometimes.
That leads me to something else, I have apps which start themselves up spontaneously. Peep, Glympse, calendar for example.... they all show up in the task list (Taskiller) when I haven't used them. I've switched off any auto updates/ stay logged out etc. So that's a bit weird. That's part of the reason I'll use Taskiller maybe 4 or 5 times a day to kill everything running.
All in all I'm very happy and impressed with the useability of this device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Makes no damn sense to me and it's posts like this that make me think it isn't the software afterall....geez. I guess I'll just have to order one some time soon and cross my fingers that it really isn't hardware related.
My application launcher force closes on a fairly regular basis these days. This is a non-rooted phone and see my earlier post for a list of about 90% of the apps I have installed. Afaik I don't have anything out of the ordinary.
Basically the launcher seems to crash more often when I'm opening a folder or trying to move a widget. The thing is, once it restarts, I can then do that action with no issues, and often can't reproduce the problem for quite a few minutes. It feels like it's a memory-leak or something. I tried removing some of my folders and seeing if just having less shortcuts loaded would help, and the results seem inconclusive. I still get crashes, but maybe not quite as often. I also tried going through each of my three toggle widgets to make sure they weren't the cause.
I'm sure other people have run into this on Android, but I haven't seen a lot of screaming about it on this forum, so is it just something people have learned to work around? Is there an established way to figure out what's causing it? I apologize is this is a really common issue, but this is my first android phone and I'm starting to wonder if I'm alone in this.
(I'm using the following widgets: touchdown email, touchdown calendar, RTM, Pandora, Beyondpod, google weather/news, 2 folders with about 5 shortcuts each, probably about 5-6 spaces open across all home screens)
I've had this issue as well. I can reproduce it, but the circumstances under which it happens would rarely come up. I move widgets and shortcuts around, after 20-30 moves, I'll get a crash when pressing on something to move it. Leads me to think its just getting overloaded.
On the other hand, when I first got my N1, something went wrong with it, force closes would happen every 10-60 second for some reason. Regardless, using Home++, I rarely get any issues.
Its a system bug. Discussed in a few threads.
+1 for Home++.
Its a good idea to remove all your widgets from Launcher, coz it still runs under Home++ and starts all the widgets even if they are not active on home++.
Hi there, on my second vibrant. I'm having some issues with this one and I need help determining if they are hardware related.
I'm running 3 homescreens with:
Beautiful widgets
Pure messenger widget
Switch pro
Pandora
I'm also running launcher pro.
I have some major lag problems when launching apps. It takes a minute or so to open most apps, plus I get a lot of black screens. I've factory reset the phone twice and the issues go away for a while on stock settings but the phone starts to lag a bit as I load apps.
Any ideas?
I might just return it....even though the phone runs ok on stock settings, might have a hard time returning it.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
most likely software.. and related to one of the apps you have dl'd. as you said in your post, the phone works fine stock and doesnt start to act up until you load apps.
i would suggest you just install your apps one by one and have a small testing phase between each one. then when it starts lagging you will know what app to avoid.
Wait did this happen on both phones. Even if not, still sounds like something you've done to the phone. I would root and run autostarts to prevent certain items from opening. It's all in the sticky if you want to try.
Its both, look into the lag fix. Launcherpro + all widgets are running off the internal sd along with the appdata (thats moved in the lag fix) and with the poor performing I/O of the internal sd, it lags. The stock launcher + samsung apps is built into the system dir (internal nand) so doesn't lag as bad.
No, I returned the first phone because the homekey wasn't working.
Once the apps do manage to load, I notice that there isn't anything I can do to slow the phone down. Certainly seems more and more like a software bug...Maybe Launcher Pro isn't playing nice (even though I've reinstalled it a few times, and after factory reset). That or the Pure Messenger widget (scrollable) is what's screwing everything up. It worked fine on my Mytouch 3gs though...We'll see.
I'll add apps one by one until I find the culprit.
OK, thus far installed ADW instead of Launcher Pro...
Everything seems to work really well thus far. ADW seems to handle scrollable pure messenger widget much better than Launcher Pro. I think that was the source of my incredible lag.
Still testing, but has anyone else had issues with the scrollable pure messenger widget and Launcher Pro?
On Nov 17 my news widget abruptly stopped updating. Manual, Auto, existing sources, new ones, NOTHING makes any difference at all. I've tried disabling AdFree, mucking about with all the settings there are, which were all correct when I started, and various other things none of which made any difference at all.
From searching the forums it sounds like if I restore factory defaults the News app may start working again, until the next time it stops of course.
I'm not certain what "restore factory defaults" means wrt the OTA update but I'm not sure I care either. I have a LOT of work into this and getting the RSS reader to work for an indeterminate period is not worth doing it all again.
I did see reference to AnyRSS, so maybe that's an option. But before I abandon the news app/widget entirely I thought I'd put a post of the forums for my actual device.
One option that I haven't tried but is interesting is in Froyo Task Killer I can delete all the app's data. This conceivably could wipe out whatever bad data is preventing it from syncing. It could also make a damn mess deleting files that would insure a Sense crash until a factory refresh.
So, simple question, does anyone know the cause of this apparently rather pervasive problem? Is there any way to fix it other than "reinstall the OS". Shocking how many things that will "fix". But while it often, perhaps even usually, works it is NEVER a reasonable alternative. Thank you micro$oft for lowering the expectations of an entire industry.
Terry
winMo free and loving it
When mine stopped updating on the 24th that was the last straw for me and I ditched Sense and began using LauncherPro Plus. It is much more customizable and super stable. You lose the news widget and the clock widget, but those can be replaced easily. Clock replaced with Fancy Widget Pro and the news I have given up on for now until I find a suitable replacement. I just haven't had the time to find one yet. Whatever you do DO NOT erase the data on the news program/widget. I did and I lost all the feed options. I had to nandroid restore to get them back. I would just find an alternative and give up on the Sense version. I know this isn't a great answer, but I'm in the same boat.
Widgets Freeze
Hi. I have noticed that widgets do not work properly on my brand new Moto X Play. You can add a widget, but it appears frozen and the content does not update or allow interaction. If you modify the widget size, it will stretch the image of the widget, again failing to update the widget. Depending on the widget, it will bring you to the app of you tap on it, but sometimes even that does not work. Deleting and replacing widgets makes no difference. Using Nova launcher appears to fix the issue, although I have not tested this for a period as long as an hour yet.
This seems to be a widespread issue across many phones, including Samsung and Nexus phones, thus is appears to be an Android issue more than a specific Moto issue or a hardware issue. It is possible it is a Google Now Launcher issue specifically.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue or know of a fix? I have yet to find one other than rebooting every hour or so (or possibly switching launchers). The leading theory is that the widget process is being kicked out of memory. The scary thing is that this bug has been reported as far back as Android 4.3, although I never experienced it on my SGS3 with CM11.
Thanks
Have not had any widget issues but have been using Nova launcher. All seem to work fine for me
Nova Launcher continues to solve the problem for me as well.
It is pretty disappointing that a major feature of stock Android fails to work out-of-the-box. I like Nova Launcher, so that is fine, but I shouldn't need 3rd party launchers to recover stock functionality. Hopefully my case is exception and not the rule.
Are you moving the apps to your SD card?